Photocomposing device



1960 R. A. HIGONNET ET AL 2,965,013

PHOTOCOMPOSING DEVICE 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 Original Filed June 4, 195] INVENTORS RENE A. HIGONNET LOUIS M. MOYROUD fm ATTORNEYS Dec. 20, 1960 NE ET AL 2,965,010

PHOTOCOMPOSING DEVICE Original Filed June 4, 195] 2 Sheets-Sheet 2 Fig.3

Fig.4

INVENTORS RENE A. HIGONNET LOUIS M MOYROUD ATTORNEYS United States Patent PHOTOCOMPOSING DEVICE Original application June 4, 1951, Ser. No. 229,804, now Patent No. 2,787,199, dated Apr. 2, 1957.- Divided and this application June 8, 1956, Ser. No. 590,307

Claims priority, application France June 6, 1950 3 Claims. (Cl. 954.5)

I The present invention relates to improvements in photographic type composing machines, and more particularly to improvements in decoding mechanism for selection of the characters in a line of type. This application is a division of our copending application Serial No. 229,804, filed June 4, 1951, now Patent No. 2,787,199. The invention is concerned especially with improvements in the photocomposing apparatus shown in our prior applications, as for example, Serial No. 770,320, filed August 23, 1947, now Patent No. 2,790,362 and Serial No. 187,752, filed September 30, 1950, the latter having been issued as Patent No. 2,664,986.

The invention will be described in relation to the embodiments shown in the accompanying drawings in which Fig. 1 is a diagram showing the construction of a control mechanism for the manufacture of a character disk;

Fig. 2 is a diagram of a decoder utilizing magnetic means;

Fig. 3 shows how the matrix characters are arranged with respect to the optical axis of the photographic lens; and

Fig. 4 shows how characters of ditferent point size are obtained from the same matrices.

In our copending application Serial No, 770,320, we have described a so-called fine or precise control'apparatus utilizing photoelectric means associated with the character disc and tending to activate the flash circuit upon the passage of each and every character through projection position. While this precise control circuit thus tends to activate the circuit for each and every character, it isprevented from doing so by a so-called rough control circuit which in combination with the register, keeps the flash control circuit open until a particular selected character comes into photographing position.

According to the present invention, the fine or precise control circuit comprises a magnetic recording device which is shown in Figs. 1 and 2.

Referring to Fig. 1, the master character disc is shown in 10 and may be made of a glass photographic plate. On the periphery of the disc at 12, an extremely thin layer of magnetic particles has been deposited, for example by means of a binder resin. These particles may be of magnetic alloy or of any other suitable magnetic substance such as iron oxide. In front of this magnetic ring, and at a short distance from it, is a recording coil 14 of the type used in the magnetic voice recorders. The matrices of the characters are drawn at a large scale andheld in position on a mounting plate 16 by means of, for example, two registering rods 18. A lens 20 makes an image 21 of the character 22 on the photographically sensitized surface of the disc. At the same time as the photograph of the character is made, an electrical impulse is sent into coil 14 by an appropriate circuit shown diagrammatically at 24. This 'magnetizes the ring 12 locally at a point having an exact angular relationship with the photographic image 21. The same procedure is carried out for each character of the font.

After having been developed, the disc is used in a mounting similar to the one shown in Fig. 2 and comprising a reading coil 26, a discharge tube 28, a lens 30 and the film 32. The lens is mounted in a turret 34, to be referred to later. The disc spins continuously and the coil generates an impulse each time a character passes in photographig position. This impulse, amplified by an amplifier 36, is normally inoperative, being stopped by a gating circuit 38, for example, a vacuum tube appropriately biased. The gating circuit is made conductive by the decoder 40 when the selected character passes in photographing position. The impulse, associated with the selected characters and generated by the passage of a magnitized section of ring 12 opposite coil 26, is then amplified and directed onto the discharge tube 28 which it primes. The supply circuit of the discharge tube is shown schematically in 44.

The decoder 40, instead of being as described in the above-mentioned application Serial No. 770,320, preferably uses magnetic means as shown in Fig. 2. The brushes are replaced by reading coils 50 to 57 cooperating with magnetic bands 50' to 57' on the decoder drum 40. On these magnetic bands are registered signals corresponding to the different code combinations. The reading coils are put in or out of the circuit by switches 60 to 67, respectively, which are controlled by the register. When the magnetic bands of the decoder rotate, a moment arrives, according to the code of the selected character, when there is no signal. The gating circuit 38 then lets pass the positioning impulsegenerated by coil 26. The details of the register are not shown, nor is the specific form of the amplifier and gat ing circuit, since said parts will be clear to those skilled in the art, after reference to said application.

The magnetic bands may be of various types. For instance, it is possible to use a layer of magnetic substances and to record on this magnetic layer the difierent code signals. The code signals can be directly registered or can modulate a high frequencycurrent. In the latter case, a detector is placedat the input of the gating circuit 38. 9

One of the main advantages of photocomposition rests in the possibility of obtaining several point sizes starting from a single character matrix. This result is obtained by enlarging or reducing photographically. To this end, the lens turret 34 in Fig. 2 is provided with a plurality of lenses of difierent focal lengths, one shown at 30 and another at 130. Any number of different lenses may be provided. The turret is rotatable about an axis 132 to bring the optical axis of any desired lens into coincidence with the projection axis.

However, it is well recognized that best results cannot be generally obtained when using exactly similar characters. In other words, the drawing of a character of small point size cannot be obtained by the simple reduction of a character of larger size. The ty'pecasters have realized the difliculty, and the creation of 'a family of characters of point sizes 5 to 16 points calls for generally 2 or 3 difierent drawings serving as abasisfor punchcutting. I p

This is very apparent if the same letter taken in alphabets of different point size is enlarged to the same height h" (Fig. 4). In this figure is shownthe result of taking letter H of point size 6 (lowest diagram), of point size 10 (middle diagram) and of point size 14 (top diagram). This drawing makes evident the rule of nonproportionality of the characters of different point sizes. A greater.

legibility is obtained by giving a greater width to char-. acters of small point size with respect to theirheight In the same manner, the thickness of the legs isfalso increased. This rule originated from practice. The widening of the characters does not vary proportionally to. the point size but should increase as the point size is reduced.

According to features of the present invention, simple means are used to satisfy the requirements arising from the rules. mentioned above. This is obtained by a combination of mechanical and optical means. It will be explained in relation to the process used for making the matrices.

' The matrix discs are made by photographic means. The characters are drawn at a large scale on plates or paper 16. (Fig. 1).

Figure 3 shows how the optical axis is located with respect to the matrix character. The position of the character is defined by two axes XX and YY. Axis XX is the base line and axis YY defines the left hand approach. If the characters are photographed in the order of composition, they align on the left hand approach axis line YY. In order to keep the characters in correct position with respect to the left hand margin when the magnification is changed, it is necessary that the optical axis of the projecting lens 20, Fig. 1 intersect the left hand axis YY. If this is not the case when the lens is changed for obtaining charactersof larger dimensions, the enlarged character will overlap the left hand margin. The same applies for the alignment defined by axis XX, which the optical axis of the lens must also intersect. It follows that the intersection of axes XX and YY is the point where the optical axis of the projecting lens must intersect the character at the time when the flash of light takes place.

It follows that the characters, when enlarged or reduced by photographic methods always fall in the same upper right quadrant except for letters whose descenders fall into the quadrant immediately below.

In order to produce the changes indicated in Fig. 4 from a single font of characters, the invention provides for optical distortion during transcription. This is most conveniently afforded by cylindrical lenses. Thus, in Fig. 2, there is associated with the lens 130 a cylindrical lens 134. As an example, for the characters of Fig. 4, the spherical lens 30 would be used for the large point size (top diagram) and the combined lenses 130 and 134 for the small point size (bottom diagram), the cylindrical axis being vertical when the lens combination 130, 134 is in projection position. This gives the spreading efiect for the smaller point size.

The lenses 130 and 134 may be spaced along the optical axes according to suitable principles of lens design. If desired, a single sphero-cylindrical lens (or lens system) may be used. It will be understood that the spread is relatively small, and that adequate depth of field is attained. The various lens systems provided on the turret will be constructed for the desired magnification and spread of the characters.

The characters are projected one by one on a film in order to compose words. To space the characters the film (or a reflecting surface such as a prism) is advanced after the projection of each character. We shall assume here that the film is advanced and that these advances or steps shall be referred to as the distance s by which the film must be advanced after each character is projected. The maximum height occupied by the characters including the small margin left above and below to space the lines without interference between ascending and descending characters will be called point size 0. The usual point sizes used in typographic work are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 1O, 11, 12 and 14 points. As explained above, changing point sizes requires changing the lenses.

According to the present invention, the mechanism for advancing the film provides advances which are not proportional to the point size. If this was not done, the larger the point size the more thecharacters would be spaced apart one from the other because of the increase in surface, as shown by the hatched portions of Fig. 4.

Figure 5 of our application Serial No. 187,752 shows a mechanism for controlling the film advance. If the characters were exactly proportional in the different sizes, a displacement of the driving racks by a number of teeth equal to the point size could be used; for example, the rack would be displaced by 6 teeth for the point size 6, 10 teeth for the point size 10, etc. According to one feature of the invention, this proportionality is not kept, thus permitting in a simple fashion a variation in the advances corresponding to nonproportional variations of width of characters in different point sizes.

Let us assume that 14 is the largest point size desired from the machine; the procedure is as follows. The drawings of the characters are made so that they have the correct proportions for point size 14 and their advance is made to correspond to a displacement of 14 teeth of the control rack. These master characters are used for making the matrix disc. On the other hand, the advances for the other point sizes are made equal to the corresponding number of teeth plus one, for example. The resulting (or corrected) advances obtained are given in the table below:

Advances Propor- Corrected Percent Point Size tional by the Increase in Advances Addition Advance of of One Character Tooth Teeth Teeth 5 6 =20% 6 7 96 =17% 7 s 54 =14% s 9 is =12z-% 9 10 is =11% 10 11 Mg =10% 11 12 hi; =9% 12 13 M, =s ,-s% 14 14 0=0% According to this table, the ratio of the difference between the corrected and the proportional advance for a given point size to the proportional advance is greater for small point sizes, which conforms with the desired results. For example, between point size 6 and point size 5 the increase is 3% but only /2% between point sizes 12 and 11.

The Bold characters generally require a greater advance than the corresponding Roman characters This may be obtained by increasing the displacement of the control rack by advancing it n supplementary teeth. The increase of advance a is then in which 0 represents the proportional advance (or for example the point size). The advantage of such a system, for a given point size is the increase of the advance proportional to the width of the character. The real advance, that is the spaced reserved for a character on the film is given by the equation s=u(n+d) where u is the number of elementary units contained in the character, this quantity characterizing the relative width of the character (for example,i=5 units; b==l0 units; w=l3 units; m=15 units; etc.) independently of the point size. n Represents the number of additional teeth by which the control rack is advanced and d represents the proportional advance or the point size, corrected as indicated by the table. By way of example, consider characters i and m composed in point size 1l(d=l2). For Roman characters, taking n=l, for i we have s=5(1+12)=65 elementary units of width. For a Roman m" we have s=15(1+12)=195 elementary width units. On the other hand, for Bold characters, taking n=2, we have for i s=5(2+l2)=70 and for m s.=15 (2 +l2)=2l0. In comparing these results with those given above we find that the increase in'advance for i" is 5 supplementary units while it is 12 units for m."

It is clear that, although the given examples refer only to the increase in the proportional advance for smaller point size or Bold characters, a reverse distortion can be chosen, for example for obtaining condensed characters. In the same way the ordinary advance used for Roman characters can be reduced for Italic characters by decreasing the extent of the movement of the control rack.

Although the present invention has been shown and described in relation to particular embodiments, it is clear that these embodiments can be modified without departing from the field of the invention.

Having thus described the invention, we claim:

1. In a photocomposing machine, the combination of a support for the characters to be photographed, a continuously rotating mechanism for moving the characters successively through a photographing position, a precise control device including a number of control means each in a precise position on the character carrier relative to a character, a decoder rotatable with said mechanism and having a number of bands of magnetic material, a stationary reading coil adjacent each band, a plurality of selector switches associated with the coils, means to photograph a character in the photographing position, and a gating circuit to operate said last-mentioned means, said gating circuit being responsive to said precise control device, reading coils and switches.

2. In a photocomposing machine, the combination of a support for the characters to be photographed, a continuously rotating mechanism for moving the characters successively through a photographing position, a precise control device including a number of control means each in a precise position on the character carrier relative to a character, a decoder rotatable with said mechanism and having a number of bands of magnetic material, a stationary reading coil adjacent each band, a plurality of selector switches associated with the coils, means to photograph a character in the photographing position, and a gating circuit to operate said last-mentioned means,

said gating circuit being responsive to said precise corttrol device, reading coils and switches, said bands having registered signals thereon arranged in a code whereby said coils are energized, upon the passage of each character through the photographing position, in a unique combination to cause operation of the gating circuit to photograph the character when a corresponding combination of said switches is closed.

3. In a photocomposing machine, the combination of a support for the characters to be photographed, a continuously rotating mechanism for moving the characters successively through a photographing position, means to photograph a character in the photographing position, and means to operate said photographing means to photograph a selected character comprising a decoder, a gate circuit operated by the decoder during the interval when said character is in said position, and a precise control device synchronized with said mechanism and operative upon said photographing means through said gate circuit to photograph said character at the precise instant when it is in said position, said decoder comprising a member having a number of bands of magnetic material, a reading coil adjacent each band, means synchronized with said mechanism to move the coils and bands relatively, a number of selector switches associated with the coils, and connections including said switches and coils to operate said gate circuit.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,540,654 Cohen Feb. 6, 1951 2,617,705 Coombs Nov. ll, 1952 2,690,913 Rabinow Oct. 5, 1954 2,714,842 Hooven Aug. 9, 1955 2,714,843 Hooven Aug. 9, 1955 2,771,595 Hendrickson Nov. 20, 1956 

